17 out of 17 people found this review helpful.
Stormbreaker - the first in the Series
Date of Review: Jul 19, 2006
The Bottom Line: This is an excellent book for long car journeys
This is an audio book consisting of 4 CD's and the approx running time is 4 hours 55 minutes. The 4 CD's are enclosed in one box, making it very handy to carry in the car.
The CD's were bought in WH Smith on an offer for Buy 3 for 2, so I am not sure of the exact price, the CD's can still be bought at WH Smith for #11.96 or from Amazon for #10.49
On long journeys in the car this is essential to keep the children quiet and to stop them fighting. As the punishment for not listening to the story the CD is turned off, as you would expect this is not welcome and creates within the car a certain amount of self-discipline and peer pressure discipline, as each one of the 3 boys want to here the exciting story line develop. We have listened to this story on at least 3 occasions and each time is as exciting as the last. There is always an anticlimax after the CD has finished and there is a good general discussion about the plot and a number of ideas are suggested as to what might have happened if….. Through the listening to this book the youngest of the 3 boys has developed an interest in reading and wants to read as mush as he can (age 7). He is not able to read the book, but wants to read things more suitable to his age range.
The book is an excellent to read and to listen to in the car, it has been brought into the house and put onto their own CD player and certain parts of particular interest to the children have been repeated.
This is the first book in the Alex Rider series. The descriptions of characters and gadgets seem to make this book play like a movie in your mind, and hopefully will one day follow the Harry Potter series and make the big screen.
Alex is a 14 year old schoolboy who lives with is guardian (uncle) until one day two men arrive at his door to tell of a set of circumstances, his uncle dies in suspicious way, Alex is not convinced as his uncle is a very careful driver and ALWAYS wares his seat belt; Alex was told that he died in a car crash; Alex tries to find the car only to discover the windscreen is covered in bullet holes Alex finds out information that he was working on a project called Stormbreaker. This investigation gets Alex involved with MI6 for the first time.
Alex is sent undercover to Cornwall to investigate Horrid Sale a multi-millionaire who is giving away thousands of computers to all the schools in the nation. Through his investigation and the use of some interesting gadgets supplied by Smithers Alex finds out the truth about the Man, the Computers and the Plot (will not give it away as it is not until near the end of the story do you find out what the plan is). He has a interesting and very imaginative escape from Cornwall and journey to London to stop the event happening.
This is another amazing well-written book, and is read in and 'easy to listen to voice' by Oliver Chris. Oliver has a very good rang of voices for the individual characters and switches from one voice to another with great ease, making the CD very easy and interesting to listen to. I am a great fan of Harry Potter, but the Alex Rider series, in my opinion is better written, with more interesting characters and a better story line. which keeps you listening until the next time there is a break in the story line before getting out of the car. So much suspense was crammed into the pages of this book.
If you have not read the previous book, or listened to it on CD, GET YOUR HAND ON IT AND LISTEN. The story line on the previous book is not linked to this story and you can listen to this book with no prior knowledge of the first book.
I am a great fan of this series of books and this is another one, which, I have thoroughly enjoyable listening to in the car and is one audio book that should not be missed by anyone.
Extra stuff
A few suggestions have been put to me as on how this review could be improved, so here you have them.
1 - Why would anyone want an audio book?
The reason why anyone would listen to an audio book are numerous, a few examples
1. You can't read, either as an adult or a child,
2. You have bad eye sight and no matter what size the print is you still find it difficult to read,
3. You are a slow reader and find reading a chore and you don't enjoy it,
4. You are very busy and don't have time to read,
5. Keep the children occupied in the car and at home,
6. You travel a lot in the car and enjoy a novel but don't because of work commitments. ETC.
2 – How does the reader sound when he changes character?
Olive Chris has a splendid blend of voices and he slips from one characters voice to another with ease. He has a good range of vocals and you can identify with the character, you begin to think of them as being real as you can actually here them physically as well as in your mind. There are voices of children, adult male and females in the story and a number of non-English speaking people speaking in broken English. All these voices are portrayed with a tremendous sense of feeling. There are NO sound affects in the story, only the story itself.
3 - How are the tracks divided up - by chapter or is it just by time?
CD 1 has 15 tracks
CD 2 has 14 tracks
CD 3 has 14 tracks
CD 4 has 14 tracks
The tracks are divided up by time; some tracks are longer than others and generally finish at the end of a piece of exciting information. If the tracks are getting too long they slip easily on with no interruption.
Hope this is of help.
Mark1961
Hope you enjoy this review.
